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15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

nytimes.com

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Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#411

Post by dgzl »

fzeroracer wrote: post #399
vturner wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish someone with $$ would start plastering this message everywhere the absurd "get rid of the elctoral college" debate comes up. We are not a democracy, seriously no one wants a democracy of 300 million plus. We are a federation of states that is supposed to have most of the control in their region and sacrifice a little bit of control to the federal government for purposes of defense and commerce. Your "democracy…

We've been giving up control to the federal government because more often than not, the local and state governments have failed [1]. Political corruption, corporate interests etc somehow don't just vanish and go away when you give power to the states. There's a balance to be made between federal and state government powers. And ultimately the electoral college is one of the things that needs to go, because it unfairl…

The point isn't that corruption goes away when power is given to the states, the point is that the state is easier to protest than the federal government. I can get to my state capital in ~4 hours of driving, but it would take me >40 hours to get to DC. The electoral college is better than straight democracy.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#412

Post by pseudalopex »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #368
mikeash wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to change the rules. At any rate, people may well feel bypassed and marginalized, but hopefully the ones outside of swing states will come around once they realize that their vote actually matters for once. And if they don’t, well, lots more people feel bypassed and marginalized now . If it’s a bad idea, what do you propose to do about it? The Cons…

> Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to change the rules. That too. This "compact" approach bugs me partly because it's a hack to get around the appropriate way of doing this, which they know they can't get enough support to do. > The Constitution allows states to cast their votes as they see fit. That may be correct. But the Wikipedia article on this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

The Supreme Court doesn't issue advisory opinions.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#413

Post by briznian »

chillwaves wrote: post #272
hnburnsy wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no conceivable logical reason why citizens in any particular state should have more or less say in such matters than those in any other. So should we abolish the senate too? Not being snarky just wondering what those who support NPV think.

Mitch McConnell represents 6.8M people in TN and he is the most powerful man in the Senate, and one of the most powerful people in the country. How difficult is it to corrupt a man like Mitch McConnell? How robust is our system of representation when one senator holds so much power?

McConnell is from Kentucky

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#414

Post by waynecochran »

georgeecollins wrote: post #370
waynecochran wrote: post #346

Great. With no electoral college, Wyoming would have 1.44% of the weight California would have towards who was elected. The only thing keeping Wyoming in the Union would be their two senators. Maybe then Wyoming folks should have to pay 1.44% of the Federal Income Tax that Californians pay. Campaigning for President? Just go to New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and maybe a few other cities. Maybe city folks ca…

Guess what? Wyoming pays less than 1.07% of the federal income tax that California does so you have gotten your wish. Also California grows about 100x the food of Wyoming so yeah we can eat our own food, thank you. The most important reason the electoral college was invented was so that states with large slave populations could count 60% of them for representation without actually giving them the vote. You don't hear…

Nice response. With actual data. Of course I am not sure the folks in the San Jaoquin Valley (who produce all that food) would be colored blue if they were an independent state.

I don't buy the slave argument -- I think the electoral college was created for the same reason we have two senators per state. Of course those states with large slave populations would have been colored blue, but that is another history folks ignore.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#415

Post by crooked-v »

achenatx wrote: post #408

Right or wrong, the only thing that matters is the constitution. It is easy to imagine that a purely democratic system would be better, but I find it easy to imagine that it would be substantially worse. The founding fathers rightly believed that most people were ignorant and relatively stupid so the people vote for the house, but senators and electors were appointed. The agreement to get small states to join was tha…

This is states taking the entirely constitutional action of deciding who to give their votes to: in this case, whoever wins the popular vote.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#416

Post by dragonwriter »

TylerE wrote: post #371
maratd wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody cares about visiting. They can craft their policies to entirely exclude or screw over states that aren't worth their time. For example, favor specific industries over others that are heavy in one state vs another. They'll do that anyway, but may think twice if they need to build a coalition of smaller states vs just winning the popular vote.

If it takes about visiting why to the campaigns spend so damn much time in Iowa?

Iowa and NH are targeted because of early caucus and primary, key in nomination contests because perceived momentum drives donations, media coverage, and later votes.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#417

Post by anon1m0us »

jdavis703 wrote: post #395
anon1m0us wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be careful about the word "small" here. What you mean is least populous, but geographically, they are large. Thus, the question is: Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it? If you eliminate the electoral college you give political control of resources to those who have absolutely NO physical control of those resources and yet still s…

Weighting "resources" is not a good thing. In the past it's been used to justify some of the most horrific policies in the U.S. The U.S. constitution counted slaves at 60% of a person. Some of the arguments for the three fifths compromise were that slaveholders didn't want people who weren't "knowledgable" about slaveholding to be meddling in slaveholder's business. This is essentially one of the causes that sparked…

All wars throughout all of history have been about resources. In the end, resources are all that matter. The civil war was about resources as well. It was the slaves that helped extract those resources from the land. It wasn't about slavery, it was about what they used the slaves to get.

This is really a red state vs blue state debate, but even on a county by county level, the majority of the counties of California, Oregon and Washington state are red. Those states' votes are determined by a handful of counties around a few urban centers. The rest of the counties' interests are more closely aligned with the red states.

And thus, the electoral college gives those red counties a voice that's ignored in their own states.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#418

Post by rayiner »

Debates over the electoral college tend to conflate two different things. The original purpose of the electoral college was a compromise between those who wanted the president directly elected, and those who wanted Congress to elect the president. While very small states have a modest edge as a result of using the number of members of Congress to decide the number of electors, the real purpose of the system is to add a layer of indirection to the election of the President, where the states have a say in their capacity as states.

That layer of indirection continues to exist today. Article II provides that “each state shall appoint” electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” So Minnesota could decide to have the state legislature appoint its electors, without a popular vote. (That would raise the importance of state government elections, which might be a good thing.)

At the same time, that layer of indirection could exist even in a purely proportional system. You could assign electoral votes based on population or number of house members.

So the debate over getting rid of the electoral college actually involves two different issues. Should the number of electors be proportional? And should we reduce the independent status of the states even more by taking away their intermediary role in electing the President?

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#419

Post by smsm42 »

hyperpape wrote: post #302

There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some people think that's bad, some people think it's good. However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states over all the rest. If you live in Wyoming, the electora…

> If you live in Wyoming, the electoral college does not help you, because your vote is secure.

For now. But if Wyoming doesn't like what happens with Republican party, it can change. There's a huge inertia in large parties, so probably won't happen overnight, but it's not a law of nature. From what I've heard, one of the reasons 2016 election went the way it did because Democrats considered certain states (not Wyoming) "secure" and didn't campaign there, while Republicans did, and turned out they've been not as secure as it seemed. The margins of victory in many states are not that wide, and the margins of uncertainty in any polls are wide, so it's never certain forever.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#420

Post by throwaway827364 »

achenatx wrote: post #408

Right or wrong, the only thing that matters is the constitution. It is easy to imagine that a purely democratic system would be better, but I find it easy to imagine that it would be substantially worse. The founding fathers rightly believed that most people were ignorant and relatively stupid so the people vote for the house, but senators and electors were appointed. The agreement to get small states to join was tha…

My problem with the electoral college is that it doesn’t seem to matter who I vote for or which way my state goes.

The election comes down to some key battleground states, which is where the candidates spend the vast majority of their time campaigning.

The constitution shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. The men who wrote that document were flawed just like any other human. Many of them owner slaves. I’m not saying we should disregard our laws but I am saying we should keep an open mind to amending the constitution as needed.

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